Learning Outcomes

​​1. Identify key artists and themes associated with the Gothic or working in a gothic mode.

2. Understand the historical contexts in which modally gothic art was produced and the philosophical concepts associated with such works.

3. Provide meaningful definitions of the term ‘Gothic’ when applied to medieval and Romantic art.

4. Debate the usefulness of the term ‘gothic’ and related terms when applied to modern/postmodern and contemporary art and visual culture.

Brief description

From the gargoyles of medieval cathedrals to the ghoulish chic of Goth couture, from the ‘venerable barbarism’ of Strawberry Hill to the nightmarish Gotham of graphic novels, from the first illustrations for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the latest episode of American Horror Story, the genre crossing and media transcending Gothic has proven an undying presence in Western visual culture.

Gothic Imagination is an interdisciplinary theory that examines this dark current in visual culture as well as Western philosophy and relates it to historical events, postmodern anxieties and present-day concerns about war and revolution, human rights and religious freedom, disease and genetic engineering, ecology and apocalypse.

Considered alongside painters, printmakers, photographers, sculptors and installation artists are creators of other forms of material culture who work in media including film, television, and video games as well as fashion design and architecture.